


into the ocean

by tansybells



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Escaping Arranged Marriages, F/F, Happy Ending, Little Mermaid Elements, Running Away, Transformation, mermaid au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-26
Updated: 2020-02-26
Packaged: 2021-02-19 12:46:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,476
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22911268
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tansybells/pseuds/tansybells
Summary: Hilda's upcoming engagement threatens her would-be relationship with Dorothea. While Hilda bemoans the situation, Dorothea comes up with a plan not only to comfort her, but to save her. In the end, it’s up to them whether they accept reality as it is or they take their fate into their own hands.
Relationships: Dorothea Arnault/Hilda Valentine Goneril
Comments: 4
Kudos: 23





	into the ocean

**Author's Note:**

> I tried to keep it under 2,500 words - mostly to see if I could - but I do wonder if it could have been better if I hadn't restricted myself. Even so, it was a joy to write, and a pleasant occasional distraction from the longer things that I'm currently working on! 
> 
> And let's be honest, who doesn't need a mermaid au every once in a while?

“You’re sooooo lucky that you don’t have to deal with the whole stupid business of getting married.”

The princess kicked her feet against the surface of the water, her layers upon layers of skirts pulled back so that the expensive fabrics didn’t get splashed. Clearly, what she  _ really _ wanted to do was let go of both those skirts and all the frustration that had been building up over the course of the last few weeks.

“It can’t be  _ that  _ bad,” Dorothea consoled, pulling herself up to sit on the sand and flicking up her tail. A few droplets of water fell down from the fin and onto her head. “Think about it, Hilda! In just a few weeks, you’re going to have your future secured and you can spend the rest of your life just doing whatever you want.”

Hilda kicked the water again. Giving up on keeping her dress pristine, she sat down on the beach, next to where Dorothea lay. After pulling her knees up to her chest, she laid her head down on top of folded arms and pulled a face at her companion. 

“Yes, it  _ can  _ be that bad,” she grumbled, a few moments before turning to look back out at how the setting sun reflected off of the rolling waves of the sea before them. “Yeah, the dresses, parties and flirting are all fun, and it’s  _ super  _ nice to get so many presents, but like…”

Hilda sighed.

“You okay?” Dorothea asked, suddenly concerned that maybe there actually was a lot more that Hilda was letting on. “I can’t help you if I don’t know what’s going on, darling.”

It was fortunate that, despite her dear friend’s affinity for looking her best, they were close enough that she didn’t need to hesitate in wrapping a sand encrusted arm around Hilda’s shoulders. The princess herself deflated beneath her touch and she leaned her jewel-adorned head against Dorothea’s bare shoulder.

“There’s no way you  _ could  _ help, Dorothea. I mean, I’d totally let you do it, whatever you’re thinking, if it would get me out of this whole situation, but I seriously don’t think that you can – you’re a  _ mermaid. _ ” Hilda gestured towards her shining tail, and even though Dorothea had to nod in agreement, she continued with her argument. “How are you gonna do anything when you’re stuck in the ocean?”

“I’ve got my ways, princess.” Dorothea chuckled and lightly tapped the tip of Hilda’s nose.

“You’re so damn full of yourself.” Hilda reached out to return the favor, but her position on her shoulder meant that she was unable to see Dorothea’s face. Dorothea pulled away from the feeling of Hilda’s nails on her cheek as she sightlessly poked around for her nose, but when that wasn’t enough to cue Hilda to stop, she gently swatted her hand away with a smile.

“I think I’m allowed to be.”

“Do I  _ want  _ to know what you’ve got up your sleeve?”

“I don’t think you could, even if you wanted to! You know us mermaids aren’t exactly fans of shirts.”

The princess drew away and pointedly averted her gaze from the roundness of Dorothea’s bare chest with a snort of laughter. In response, Dorothea tossed ocean-soaked chestnut curls over her shoulder and smirked.

They had been together for long enough that Dorothea knew that Hilda wasn’t being malicious by any means. Rather, she was only appreciating her objective beauty in a way that only another objectively beautiful person could. Friendship was funny that way, how sometimes it had only taken a few of their nighttime rendezvouses to feel like they’d known each other for a lifetime.

Well, maybe Hilda had been sneaking out to meet her for a bit more than a ‘few’ times. And by a little longer, she may or may not have meant a year or two. But who was keeping track, right? Certainly not Dorothea. As nice as it was to have had her companionship for so long, she’d become more and more aware of the fact that soon Hilda would be married to someone from some far-off country and their meetings would be no more.

Dorothea was unceremoniously pulled from her silent musing by two hands grabbing her face on either side and pulling her so close to Hilda’s that those shining pink eyes filled her entire vision.

“You’re like, weirdly quiet for someone who’s supposed to be bemoaning my situation with me.” A shiver ran down Dorothea’s spine as the warmth of Hilda’s words washed over her face, but she held steady in the face of her accusation and merely smiled.

“Oh, no, I’m still bemoaning. I promise.” Her smile was so wide that the corners of her mouth began to hurt after mere moments of holding it.

Hilda, obviously, was not convinced.

“Sooooooo bemoaning,” Dorothea teasingly bolstered her efforts, mimicking Hilda’s tendency to draw out words for effect. “So verrrrrry bemoaning.”

“Listen! Listen, Dorothea –  _ you’d  _ be bemoaning too if you’re like, one party away from getting hitched.” Hilda let go of her face and groaned dramatically as she careened sideways into the sand. Dorothea held back a grimace. There was definitely sand in Hilda’s hair now, if it hadn’t been there before. She didn’t envy her the task of trying to brush it out.

“Oh, it’s gone that far?”

“ _ Yeah. _ ”

“Oh.”

Hilda shrugged into the sand. Quietly, in a serene tone entirely different from the one she’d been complaining in up to that point, she said, “I’m supposed to pick my favorite suitor at the next ball.”

Dorothea inhaled sharply; Hilda continued on.

“And after I pick my favorite suitor, I get married! Yay, right? Wrong!  _ Wrong _ ! Like I cannot come  _ close  _ to telling you how wrong you’d be.” She threw her hands up into the air, gesticulating dramatically at the sky above them. “I mean, sure, you look forward to that stuff when you’re a little kid – or at least  _ I  _ did; I don’t know what you magic people dream about – but it was always so far away that I never really had to actually think about it.”

“And now that it’s actually here…”

“Now that it’s actually here, it’s like I can’t make myself go through with it?”

“It’s not like you do anything in the first place,” Dorothea laughed. “Hilda, you’re so lazy that I’m honestly surprised that you manage to drag yourself down to the beach to see me so often.”

She only just managed to shield herself from the handful of crumbling sand that Hilda lobbed her way.

“Ex- _ cuse  _ you! I drag myself down here because you are my  _ friend  _ and I  _ love  _ you!”

Dorothea cut into what was surely building into one of Hilda’s self-demeaning tirades with a jab of her own. “You know, I’m surprised so many men are vying for your hand when you’re the total  _ opposite  _ of what everyone usually wants for a wife.”

Hilda gasped in faux horror, and said something that Dorothea brushed off with another tease of her own – but even as Hilda lay into her, landing blow after playful blow on the soft flesh of her upper arm, Dorothea couldn’t help but think that while she was indeed a mermaid bound to the currents and tides, perhaps there was something she could do to help Hilda after all.

* * *

“Yes, my Lord, it would be an  _ honor  _ to dance with you.”

Hilda fluttered her fan with a calculated delicacy and batted her lashes behind the lace with a coquettishness that was _certain_ to set butterflies loose in the stomach of the suitor in question. 

Goddess above, she wanted to barf. The idea that it was okay to parade her about in front of dozens of guys as she played the part of a gift-wrapped princess – it was nauseating! Absolutely nauseating!

The music struck up again as she fell into step with the young duke who  _ apparently _ felt audacious enough to consider himself in the running for her hand. He led her around the ballroom in the gracious circling motion that was typical of a waltz. But as they moved closer and closer to the outer rim of the dance floor, the nausea that had characterized her night so far only grew and grew.

She’d mentioned to one of the servants mulling around between dances that she felt faint, and wouldn’t it be so kind if someone were to crack open a window and let in some fresh air? But as nice as it actually was to have the sea breeze waft into the ballroom and dilute all the perfumes and colognes that choked up the place, all it really did was remind Hilda that there was somewhere else she’d rather be.

It just wasn’t enough to smell the ocean. She wanted to feel the cool spray against her face, to smush wet sand between her toes as she talked with Dorothea. It didn’t even matter what they talked about! Makeup, magic – honestly, all she wanted was to be freed of the never-ending pomp and circumstance that made up her final ball. Her final fucking ball before she had to choose who she’d be joined with in holy fucking matrimony.

A sigh filled her chest. Hilda desperately tried to swallow it back down but it immediately became apparent that there wasn’t any point in trying. The suitor, with one hand on her hip and the other one holding onto hers  _ way  _ too tightly, looked at her with something like concern darkening his otherwise unremarkable features.

“Is something wrong?”

Her attempt to pass it all off with a dainty, feminine laugh failed, the laugh stuck in her throat, and the duke’s expression to only grew in intensity.

“No, nothing’s –”

The grand double-door entry to the ballroom creaked open behind her and interrupted her denial. The music came to a faltering stop at the noise. The waltz swung to a halt alongside it. The quiet gasping of several attendees rose in a dissonant chord, and Hilda contorted to look behind her – her pulse rising at the thought of a possible escape from the awkwardness of the guy she was dancing with – but whoever had opened the door had already moved on.

She shook her head, forced a smile for the sake of her suitor. It had been  _ stupid _ of her to believe, even for a second, that someone would swoop in and rescue her from the one task she couldn’t manage to weasel herself out of on her own.

“Yeah, nothing’s up,” she said, taking a step to the side in an attempt to resume their interrupted dance and get on with her miserable night. “Now come on, let’s finish this up, yeah?”

But he didn’t play along, to her surprise. Instead, he just stared over her shoulder, stupid and slack-jawed.

Hilda rolled her eyes and started to say something appropriately berating, his feelings be damned, but a sudden tap on her shoulder interrupted her. Knocking the duke’s hand off of her with a lack of finesse that belied her frustration with the situation, she whirled around with a plastered-on smile to ask just where they were getting off on making her already sour mood worse – and saw her.

_ Dorothea. _

She didn’t stop to think about just how Dorothea had managed to come, just leapt into her arms with a delighted laugh and embraced her with all the might she could muster. “I can’t believe you’re here!” 

Dorothea chuckled and returned her hug, pressing Hilda so close against her chest that she could feel the rapid pitter-patter of her heartbeat against her cheek. “Did you think I wouldn’t?”

“Um, yeah?” Hilda’s face already ached from how the wideness of her smile tugged at her cheeks. “I mean – you’re –”

“I have my ways,” Dorothea said, pulling away from the embrace and smiling down at Hilda. And looking up at her, time slowing around them, Hilda couldn’t imagine how there could be any stars in the sky when they all seemed to live in the light of Dorothea’s eyes.

The forgotten suitor spoke up from behind, probably protesting or something, but Hilda only deigned to shoo him away as she looked up and down Dorothea’s body.

The absence of her tail, of the fin and the spattering of scales that slowly crept its way up her torso was immediately apparent, but maybe most importantly –

“Holy  _ shit,  _ Dorothea! Are you wearing  _ clothes _ ?”

“Yes, I am!” Dorothea clasped Hilda’s hands in her own and stepped back just far enough that she could swivel her hips from side to side and show off the usual, but clearly novel to her, way in which her full skirt gently swayed. Hilda laughed quietly at the sight – not because Dorothea looked ridiculous in the getup, but rather because it was the first time that she’d seen Dorothea without simultaneously seeing the entirety of her full figure.

“But that’s not what’s important here!” Hilda’s breath escaped her as Dorothea pulled her in close once more, one hand on her lower back and the other holding her own. It called to mind how every suitor had held her, but there was no reluctance here. Only joy. “What’s important is, I’ve come to take you away with me.”

“What do you mean… ‘take me away?’” Hilda gasped.

Dorothea’s smile took on an otherworldly quality as she said, “What do you think?”

Hilda paused. She knew exactly what Dorothea was implying, and she knew that she  _ wanted  _ it, but hesitation dragged her gaze to the far-off dais where her parents sat and chatted with one of the suitors they’d seemed to favor most. 

That was enough for her to make up her mind.

“Yeah. Let’s go,” she whispered, the corners of her eyes crinkling with delight in the face of having made a choice for herself. Unwinding Dorothea’s hands from around her, Hilda clutched the mermaid’s arm close and led the way out of the palace.

Nobles gasped in shock and surprise as they burst through the double doors. The king and queen shouted and begged for understanding. Guards clutched their weapons and tried to block their way out of the palace, but nothing could stop their escape down to the beachfront.

Their laughter rose into the air as Hilda kicked her shoes off into the sand and Dorothea threw both her and Hilda’s dresses joyously up into the night sky.

And as the cold ocean water enveloped Hilda, washing the expectations and obligations of her former life away and making her anew, Dorothea pressed their foreheads together and whispered something that Hilda couldn’t understand. Their kicking legs fused into thrashing tails; lungs adapted to take in water instead of air. When all was said and done, the two of them swam to Dorothea’s home on the ocean floor and collapsed into an exhausted pile of endless love and affection.

**Author's Note:**

> Endless gratitude to [Fox](https://archiveofourown.org/users/FoxVII/pseuds/FoxVII) for her inspiration and editing! I don't think any of this would have come to light without her. 
> 
> I actually have a few more things that I want to play around with in this little universe, so there's a chance it'll end up being a short series of lil vignettes. As always, I can be found on my [tumblr](https://selkiesbian.tumblr.com) if you've got any questions, ideas, or suggestions! 
> 
> I hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it. Thank you! ❤


End file.
